FAQ

Company

Would you like to know something about Katjes?

Where does the name “Katjes” actually come from?

Katjes is the Dutch word for "little cat". Our first product was a little liquorice cat. Everyone liked it so much that the whole family was named after it: The Katjes Fassin GmbH + Co. KG.

How long have you been around?

The Katjes family was established in 1950 by Klaus Fassin under the name Katjes Fassin GmbH + Co. KG. But our story actually goes back even further – to 1910 – with a recipe for the manufacture of liquorice from Sicily. This is how the production of our little liquorice cats “Katjes” began. By the way, the “Katjes-Kinder” have always been vegetarian from the beginning. In the 70s, we commenced the production of the first fruit gums.

How many employees work for you and where are the products produced?

We have three manufacturing sites in Germany: The headquarters are based in Emmerich where fruit gum and liquorice is produced, the sherbet products are manufactured in Remshalden near Stuttgart and all hard boiled candy is made at our transparent candy factory in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Katjes employs nearly 500 people overall, a lot of them are already 2nd generation. The eponymous family is also still part of the team. Bastian Fassin, son of the founder of the company Klaus Fassin, is in charge of the business together with the managing shareholder Tobias Bachmueller.

Does Katjes have a factory outlet store?

We even have two! One is located in Emmerich by the river promenade and the other one in Potsdam. This is where you can visit our transparent candy factory. Besides that, you will find our Katjes Café Grün-Ohr in Berlin Mitte where you can indulge on homemade vegetarian and vegan pastries and coffee. Check it out. We are looking forward to your visit.

I have read that your company buys shares of other companies and start-ups. Is that true?

Products

Do you have any questions regarding our products?

Which is the most popular Katjes product?

Our most popular product is the Katjes Grün-Ohr Hase aka Brad the Bunny: This sweet foam sugar bunny with its delicious fruit gum ears has been awarded and is simply veggie-licious. Just like with all Katjes fruit gum products, we use only natural flavoring and coloring. The white ones are cherry flavored, the pink ones are raspberry.

The Yoghurt-Gums howeverdo not fall short of our Brad the Bunny. They have a high share of skimmed milk yoghurt powder and have a delicious taste of strawberries, cherries, blueberries, pears, raspberries and lemons. Did you know that our Yoghurt-Gums were created in 1971 as the first product of its kind? And they have been vegetarian from the start. A real fruit gum yoghurt innovation so to speak and even today a true original.

Why do Katjes taste so yummy?

High-quality products are of great importance to us. That is why we only use high-quality and natural ingredients. Artificial colorants? For us, this is an absolute no-go! Instead, we only use fruit juices, fruit pulp and coloring extracts from fruits and plants for our fruit gums. By doing so, we also completely refrain from using artificial flavorings. For our liquorice products, we only use high-quality liquorice juices from selected areas of cultivation.

Where can I purchase your products?

Actually, you will find them almost anywhere in Germany and in several other countries. However, it may occasionally happen that you cannot find a particular product of ours at your retailer. Fortunately, nearly all of our products are available online. Just check it out here or here or here.

Why can’t I find a particular product in my supermarket anymore?

It can take a while until new products are displayed on shelf everywhere. If you cannot find your desired product, ask the store manager of your supermarket. Hopefully, it will show up faster then. Otherwise, just look online, e.g. on Amazon, World of Sweets or AllYouNeedFresh.

Sometimes it happens that there is less demand for one of our products. Naturally, we don’t want to have any products in our range that you do not like so much. Hence, we sometimes remove some from our assortment. In turn, though, we continuously add new ones! Just take a look at our product overview where you will find all fruit gum and liquorice articles that we currently have in our assortment.

Why do you use plastic wrapper for your delicious products?

If there was a real sustainable, long-lasting and securely usable alternative to plastic, we would use it. But since our products need to comply with high quality and hygiene standards, we cannot just use any kind of material. For instance, the wrapping material has to be odor neutral, it has to conserve air and it must be resistant to humidity and harmful substances.

Due to sustainability reasons, we absolutely recommend to recycle our bags and throw them in your recycling trash bin for plastic. This is why all our products are marked with the “Gruener Punkt”. Together with other plastic materials, they become part of a closed cycle of re-use to stress the environment and the climate as little as possible.

Ingredients & nutritional values

Do you have any questions regarding our ingredients & nutritional values?

Do you have any products without gelatin?

Yay! Our fruit gum and liquorice assortment is entirely vegetarian – ALL VEGGIE! We have been working diligently for years now to create veggie recipes and are now very proud to say: The entire assortment is 100% without animal gelatin. To ensure that this can be seen at first glance we have marked the product packaging twice: With our Katjes Veggie label and with the official V-label of the German vegetarian association VEBU. Click here to find a complete overview of our complete assortment.

Are there any substances made from animals in your products?

All vegetarian products manufactured by us are recipe wise free from any animal raw materials (except for skimmed milk yoghurt powder, skimmed milk powder and beeswax).

The skimmed milk yoghurt powder we use is produced without any animal rennet.

All juices and concentrates are cleared by microfiltration, which means no gelatin is used.

So why aren’t your products vegan?

This is because most of our products are coated with natural beeswax. Without coating the yummy products in the bag they would all stick together. There are currently exceptions like our sugar drizzled products “Wunderland”, “Salzige Heringe” and “Lakritz Batzen”. However, due to manufacturing, all of our products can contain traces of milk, which is why even our products without beeswax are vegetarian and not vegan.

Do you have any products without lactose?

Here we have summarized our products without lactose for you. Nevertheless, we unfortunately cannot guarantee that these products do not contain traces of lactose, since we also manufacture products with milk ingredients. Furthermore, we continuously improve our products, which could result in slight changes in the recipe. Thus, please also always pay attention to the ingredients listed on our packaging.

Which of your products contain no gluten?

Here we have listed our products without gluten for you. According to the requirements of the German Celiac Society, a minor residual amount of wheat protein in the products is tolerated. Since our recipes are continuously improved, this can result in slight changes. This is why we recommend that you always check the ingredients listed on our packaging.

Which of your products contain alcohol?

Satisfaction

There was something wrong with my favorite product.

There was an external product in my Katjes bag

Oh no! It goes without saying that our products are packed sorted but even with all due accuracy we cannot preclude that a product from the previous production run remains unnoticed on the production line and ends up in the following production run.

However, there are several hand sorting stations at the end of the assembly line to make sure, that external or faulty products are being sorted out. If that did not happen in your case, we are very sorry. We hope that your next Katjes purchase will be of the usual quality again.

One product unfortunately does not look as nice as it usually does. Why?

It happens sometimes that one of our products is missing one lovely detail, like for instance if one Brad the Bunny lacks its fruit gum ear or any other visual differences occur. These are due to mistakes in the embossment and pouring process.

What does this mean? Here comes a technical explanation for those of you who really want to know:

Our liquorice and fruit gum products are all cast products, which means that hot product material is poured into negative molds. Prior, these molds are embossed in mold powder, which is basically plane food starch.

After the embossment of the negative molds, a mold might collapse while transporting the trays, which might possibly result in a faulty shape of the product when the material is being poured into the mold.

While pouring the material there is always the possibility that faulty shapes occur due to the production process itself (e.g. misplaced or missing noses or ears). These little blemishes can unfortunately not be ruled out 100%.

Of course we also set high quality standards when it comes to visual appearance. Products that do not meet our requirements are sorted out at the end of the production line. In exceptional cases, however, it is possible that few of these products make it into a bag. We are making every effort to reduce these incidents to a minimum and to continuously optimize our production processes.

There are white or brown pieces in my Katjes bag. What is that?

If there are little chunks of white to brown stuck to the products, it is probably baked food starch. These little chunks of food starch can show up due to the manufacturing process. Since we continuously monitor the production stream, we are doing everything we can to sort out faulty products at the end of the production line at the latest so that you will only find high quality products in your bag.

I want a different mixture in my favorite product selection

This is a classic: Unfortunately, we will never live up to each and every individual preference in taste. Every product belonging to the mix has been produced in the same amount as the others. However the share inside a product bag may vary when the different articles are mixed and put into the bag by weight and not by counting them. This may result in variances in the actual mix inside each bag. The net weight of each bag however always remains the same.

Why does my favorite product now taste different than before?

If your favorite article tastes different than what you were used to, then this might be because we changed the recipe a while back. In order to make our entire assortment vegetarian, we needed to change the recipes of all non-vegetarian products by summer 2016. This happened for instance to Jogger-Gums, Tropen-Früchte, Jogger-Lakritz, Euro Münzen, Lakritz Batzen und Salzigen Heringe.

We are very happy that a lot of you now like our products even better than before. We also understand that some of you are not so fond of the changes we have made. Tastes are really very different. Even though we try very hard with every change of recipe to create a product as similar to the original as possible in terms of taste and consistency, it is not always 100% possible. Have a look at our current product portfolio and get inspired to try something new.